July 2019 archive

The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard

The Tea Master and the Detective

The Tea Master and the Detective introduced me to Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya universe, an interstellar setting that sprang from an alternate Earth history in which East Asian powers and cultures dominated the age of discovery and thus also the leap into space. Her web site says that the more recent stories are influenced by …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/29/the-tea-master-and-the-detective-by-aliette-de-bodard/

Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor

Binti: Home

Binti told the classic science fiction story of a talented young person from the hinterlands — and an outsider from an outsider people in those hinterlands — who gains admission to wider worlds by dint of talent and hard work. Unlike many of those stories, though, Binti’s is interrupted by violence and tragedy even before she …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/27/binti-home-by-nnedi-okorafor/

The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark

The Black God's Drums

“The night in New Orleans always got something going on, ma maman used to say—like this city don’t know how to sleep.” (p. 7) It doesn’t, and neither does P. Djèlí Clark’s splendid, exciting, enchanting novella The Black God’s Drums. Clark’s first-person narrator, a slightly feral young woman named Creeper, makes her own way in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/24/the-black-gods-drums-by-p-djeli-clark/

Sweet Dreams by Tricia Sullivan

In near-future London, Charlie Aaron volunteers for a drug trial to help make ends meet. Nothing seems to happen, but several months later, she develops a crippling narcolepsy that sees her fired from her desk job, unable to make the anonymous ASMR videos that are her side gig, and thus evicted from the cupboard under …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/23/sweet-dreams-by-tricia-sullivan/

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

Trail of Lightning delivers perfectly cromulent action and adventure in the Navajo corner of a world that has suffered a partly supernatural climate apocalypse. Maggie, the book’s first-person narrator, is a badass. Trained by a near-god in the arts of combat, she adds magical powers of speed and killing prowess, powers drawn from her Navajo …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/22/trail-of-lightning-by-rebecca-roanhorse/

Tauben im Gras by Wolfgang Koeppen

Tauben im Gras by Wolfgang Koeppen

Wolfgang Koeppen was born in 1906 and thus grew up in Germany’s Weimar years. He published his first two novels after the Nazi takeover but before the war began. At first, his work as a scriptwriter for film studios in Munich made him exempt from the draft. Following a bomb attack, he went underground and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/21/tauben-im-gras-by-wolfgang-koeppen/

The Night Manager by John Le Carré

The Night Manager by John Le Carré

Not quite 100 pages in on this one, I pronounced the Eight Deadly Words. Sorry, eponymous Jonathan. Even sorrier, Sophie, who lived and died some years before the main action, and who existed to give Jonathan regrets. And perhaps to show that the corrupt Egyptian brothers might be a darker shade of grey than the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/21/the-night-manager-by-john-le-carre/

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Calculating Stars starts with a bang. Elma York, Kowal’s protagonist and first-person narrator says that she and her husband had flown up to the mountain cabin that he inherited for stargazing, “By which I mean: sex. Oh, don’t pretend that you’re shocked. Nathaniel and I were a healthy young married couple, so most of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/20/the-calculating-stars-by-mary-robinette-kowal/

Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo

Welcome to Lagos begins well outside of the Nigerian metropolis, at a hot and dirty army outpost somewhere in the Niger delta: oil country, but also rebel country. Serving under a corrupt colonel and terrorizing local people is not what Chike Ameobi signed up for the army to do. After twelve months as an officer …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/19/welcome-to-lagos-by-chibundu-onuzo/

Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns #3) by Kendare Blake

Finally, a book I picked for meeeeee! Nothing against the books sent to me for work, here or at CriminalElement.com, but dang, it’s nice to have free time again and the luxury of leisurely selecting from my back catalog, so to speak, what I’d like to read next. So, of course, I chose to enjoy …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/10/two-dark-reigns-three-dark-crowns-3-by-kendare-blake/